Such a day! It was
like "a winnowing of chaos." Very little work was done at the
Treasury Department in the midst of such excitement and confusion. We are to
remove at once to Richmond, and I am told Colonel Joseph Daniel Pope, Mr.
Jamison, and many of the employees of the printing establishment, have already
departed. I do not know if this be true; I hear too many contradictory reports
for all of them to be true. One thing, however, appears to be quite true—Sherman
is coming! And I never believed it before. This afternoon, we could distinctly
hear firing in the distance, and at this writing (8.30 p. m.) we can see the
sky arched with fire in the direction of the Saluda factory. Must I go with the
department to Richmond? In such case, my parents will be entirely alone, Johnny
having gone, also, to the front. Does this not clearly show the dire extremity
to which we are reduced, when boys of sixteen shoulder the musket? There are
other reasons why I should like to remain here to receive Sherman: it is high
time I was having some experiences out of the ordinary, and if anything
remarkable is going to happen, I want to know something about it; it might be
worth relating to my grandchildren! Anyhow, it is frightfully monotonous, just
because you are a woman, to be always tucked away in the safe places. I want to
stay. I want to have a taste of danger. Midnight.—But I am overruled; I must
go. My father says so; my mother says so. Everything is in readiness—my trunks
packed, my traveling clothes laid out upon the chair, and now I must try to
catch a little sleep. And then on the morrow—what? What will be the next stroke
upon the Labensuhr? God only knows.
SOURCE: South
Carolina State Committee United Daughters of the Confederacy, South Carolina Women in the Confederacy,
Vol. 1, “A Confederate Girl's Diary,” p. 274-5
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